A STRAMASH IN SYDNEY.

Waikato Times, Volume XXX, Issue 2471, 12 May 1888, Page 2 (Supplement)

A STRAMASH IN SYDNEY.

If the streets of Sydney are somewhat narrow for the highways of the Queen City of Australia, when the local Freeman's Journal lets its young man loose the fact becomes painfully manifest. "Our country cousins," he writes, "accustomed as they are to sidewalks three acres broad, are simply pitiable in their helplessness when tangled up on a Sydney pavement. Only the other morning a ' lanky ' bush native was rolling and gaping along in George-street, when he plumped on top of a stout old lady who was chasing a runaway child, and landed her heavily in the gutter. Hastily turning round to apologise to the wrong party altogether, he was caught a sounding whack on the back by a man who was darting along with a load of shutters, and as he lurched forward on his face a nursegirl skilfully ran a twin-laden perambulator in front of his knees, and over the whole lot went in the most picturesque confusion. Just as the ' bushy ' had disentangled himself,and climbed upon his hands aud knees, a hurdy-gurdy man, who was going one way and looking another, ran his music shop into the countryman's coat-tails, and sent him sprawling, with a mighty swish, fair across the pathway, where he was trampled on and most unmercifully kicked by about a dozen disgusted citizens, who, as they spitefully dug their heels into his spine, excitedly asked each other where were the police that they allowed a drunken hog like that to obstruct the footpath. Just as the confusion was at its highest, and the frantic citizens were clutching wildly at the pavements, a nigger, who was carrying a bucket of whitewash on tho end of a stick, whieli rested on his shoulder, came along in an abstracted sort of way, and in a second he tangled his toes amongst the shrieking crowd below, and landed himself and his whitewash over the lot with a strict impartiality that seemed born of a better world. Hastily scrambling to his feet the dnrkey caught a small boy, who was enjoying the fun, a kick that sent him 50 feet away, when the small boy unhesitatingly fired half a brick at tho niggor's head, and broke £15 worth of a jeweller's window into splinters. By this time tho unfortunate 'bushy' who started the trouble had got clear, aud was scooting off for the railway station yelling ' fire ' and ' murder' at every jump, when an intelligent constable tripped up his heels, and had very little difficulty next morning in getting him fined 40s for 'drunk and disorderly, righteous conduct, and tearin' hof me uniform, yer Wurshup.' Half of the other victims were carried to the infirmary first and the steam laundry to be washed afterwards, while the rest remained to break the nigger's bucket over his head, and curse tho memory of tho man who first chalked out the streets of Sydney."